I was Gobsmacked #BlackLivesMatter. It was beautiful.

I got it. I finally got it, and I had not yet written to help others understand. It is now time.

Black Lives Matter was important to me from the beginning. The city of Pasadena has our own young black man, shot dead by police, reports delayed and heavily redacted, and no indictment. He has a name: Kendric McDade. I went to a vigil for him after #BlackLivesMatter was established, and he was mourned in the context of men and women across the country being killed by police. I mourned with fellow citizens and members at the First AME church when nine people were murdered in cold blood in Charleston, South Carolina. The examples above, plus black person, after black person, after black person dying at the hands, or guns, of those sworn to “protect and serve” cemented my support for #BlackLivesMatter. To put myself in context, I walk the border, la frontera, between white and black as a queer multicultural, or mestizaje, Unitarian Universalist graduate of a Methodist seminary who believes showing up is an important part of ministry, and for those who do not show up, educating. So at this point in a blog, a typical progressive could write something like “I support them, but…,” or, “I supported them, but they…” Mine is more like, “I support you. Oh! (Face palm!) Of course!” With about a year between “you.” and “Oh!”

As for the tactics #BlackLivesMatter employ, I admire the courage it takes to shut down business as usual. This country’s citizenry is entirely too comfortable to have compassion for the true suffering of others, unless it directly affects their social circle. It is not until the pursuit of the dollar or the spending of that dollar gets interrupted that the bubble of comfortable ignorance is burst. Oh, and interrupting their driving will get most of their attention. Brilliant move.

Fellow liberals complained that emergency vehicles could not get through when roads were blocked. Although this was was untrue, fair weather liberals said they could not support #BlackLivesMatter as a consequence. People dying in the streets had their lives interrupted. Permanently. The families and friends of those victims had their lives interrupted by profound grief. Then the families had their lives interrupted by something utterly unfathomable when the justice system failed them not only by not indicting the perpetrator, but by blaming their loved one for their own death. Will not interrupting your ride cause you stop, think, have any kind of empathy or compassion?

The interruptions of Bernie Sanders’ campaign speeches were another tactic that even more older white liberals used to stop supporting #BlackLivesMatter. Yet, there was progress, too. Conversations began. The establishment opened a tiny bit to listen. Supportive liberal white people who continued started conversations with their friends, their families, their churches. Places of worship who supported all along became more overt by putting out signs. The women #who started #BlackLivesMatter started a chapter program so that there would be a unified voice, and those with other agendas would be less able to hijack local groups.

My only question was why #BlackLivesMatter did not work more with the leaders from the civil rights era. As I am not a black person, I cannot, nor will not presume to know better. Occasionally, I’d been dropping in on a Saturday workshop held at a church in Los Angeles on nonviolent resistance, with examples coming from from the Civil Rights Era. The tactics were adapted from Ghandi in India. It all sounded good. The bus boycott and the lunch counters were issues chosen by women, and worked on equally, we attendees were told. The workshop facilitator did not think #BlackLivesMatter would work because of the tactics, and that the appeal is not broad enough, that is to young and old alike, which is code for respectability politics. Yet the tactics chosen in the late fifties and early sixties were radical enough to shake the status quo, in that context.

To the North, Neighborhood UU Church in Pasadena, strengthens its commitment to racial equity with numerous events and meetings. At a film and panel held there, I was fortunate to see one of the founding members of #BlackLivesMatters, Ms. Patrisse Cullors on a panel. Without asking, my question was answered. Respectability politics. Again. I get respectability politics: the elders know from experience that the oppressed must approach those in power in an approved way in order not to offend them. Tone policing goes with that, modulating one’s voices as not to frighten or offend the one in power. I could understand why Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton were refused when they swooped in to Ferguson. Sometimes one just does not need that kind of help. I had read certain words over and over related to #BlackLivesMatter. Once I heard the words: women, queer, Trans, agenda, from Ms. Cullors mouth in the context of being held back from talking in Church did I understand. I was gobsmacked! Of course! These are women leading. There are queer and Trans women leading. These women are about far from what the church civil rights leaders can handle.

Black Lives Matter is radically inclusive. I kept hearing Trans and queer but it did not register deeply until I, in my inner vision, saw the women of Black Lives Matter asking to speak, and being barred from talking in church about people dying in the streets because of their “queer agenda.” My heart hurt every time I learned yet another Trans woman was murdered this past year. Black Trans women, although a tiny minority, are the most vulnerable of black adults. Queer black women are not far behind. Black Lives Matter is based on the profound truth that all black lives matter, even queer and Trans black women, because they are the marginalized of the marginalized.

The older generation of Civil Rights and/or leaders still reduce the embodiment of the radical love of Christ to an “agenda.” In the wake of yet another Martin Luther King Jr. day the straight church civil rights leaders are being left behind in that journey towards restoring equity, civil rights, and sometimes basic human dignity to all those who are marginalized in this country.